I've had this problem from the very beginning, and I had to do a lot of update installs manually because of it.

I'm running Fedora Core 6 on my Laptop (specs are at the end of this post). From the very beginning, I have had issues with the Ethernet Adapter (Broadcom 4401 10/100 Adapter). During it's standard boot, when it looks for my Ethernet adapter, I get the error: "b44 on eth0 does not appear to be present, delaying initialization."

I have tried installing the up to date driver, but that has not improved anything.

I got my GUI up and running (I had video problem earlier that are now fixed). Under System > Administration > Network, in the Network Configuration window, I see eth0 there, but it's Inactive. If I try to activate it, I get the following Error:

Cannot activate network device eth0!
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A)
SET failed on device eth0 ; No such device.

Determining IP information for eth0... failed.

The funny thing is that eth0, isn't wireless. So I don't know why it's trying to get a Wireless request. I have researched that error code, and I have only seen it appear with issues involving WiFi cards.

Now, if I go to the Hardware Tab, in the same Network Configuration window, I see the proper description "Broadcom Corporation", type "Ethernet", Device "eth0" and Status "ok". If I click Edit, I see that the proper Adapter is listed. I also see that the device is "eth0". However my IRQ is "unknown". All other fields are blank.

LAPTOP SPECS:
Dell Inspiron 640m
Intel Core Duo @1.6 GHZ
1 GB RAM
120GB SATA HDD
14.1" LCD Display at 1440 x 900 Resolution
Broadcom 4401 10/100 Mbps Ethernet Controller
Intel Wireless 3945ABG Wireless Controller
Dual Boot with Windows XP professional and Fedora Core 6

Anyone know why my ethernet adapter isn't working properly? It works just fine in a Windows environment. Fedora can see it, it knows it's there, and it knows exactly what kind of adapter it is. But it can't get it started up! Anyone know what's going on? How can I fix this?

IN terminal as root if you could possibly run these commands for me and paste the results in this post.

lspci
then ifconfig eth0

Thank you.

[root@localhost ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
02:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
02:01.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
02:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
02:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
02:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
[root@localhost ~]# ifconfig eth0
eth0: error fetching interface information: Device not found
[root@localhost ~]#

Does that not help?

Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller
Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection

Fedora Core 6.

I do remember the network controller not working with FC4 earlier on Inspirons, and the work around was to add a boot option acpi=noirq in /boot/grub.conf

But... that does not seem to be working either with FC6.

Anyone has any suggestions?

Thanks
-Gangs

Same issue with my Inspiron 5100.

Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T

Nothing new from my ifconfig or lspci

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I am also having problems activating this devic

in the |Devices| tab the Status Indicates Inactive for Device eth0

in the |Hardware| tab Description shows Broadcom Corporation, Type Ehthernet, Device eth0, Status OK

In the |Devices| tab I can delete the entry and re-add it but when I try to activate it this error displays -

---------------------------------------------------
system-config-network:
---------------------------------------------------
Cannot activate network device eth0!
---------------------------------------------------
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A):
SET Failed on device eth0 ; No Such device.
SIOCGIFFLAGS: No Such device
Failed to bring up eth0
---------------------------------------------------

as root I typed -
]# ifconfig eth0 up
eth0: unkown interface: No such device

]# lspci -vv
...
...
Ehternet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4481-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 30a2
Control: I/O- Mem- Busmaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap+ 66MHZ- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr
etc etc
....
...

<#> I just had a thought about this; it shows BCM$$81-B0 which is not the card I've got. Let me go and see if I can find a driver somewhere. I know there is a site that talks of the wireless driver for the NX7400 but I havnt looked for a Ethernet driver.

I will post back here if I found it.

FYI - Wireless Driver for Fedora Core 6 (FC6) on the NX7400 --->

this is my first post so no urls will try to update later

Thanks for a great forum.
zabzoo

When you installed Fedora Core 6 did you select the virtualization option.

If selected this option installs xen which was screwing up my build.

To find out if you installed xen do a uname -a

If you see fc6xen that's no good because bc440x driver is not supported with xen

I hope that helps.

If you want to fix it I would just reinstall and not select virtualization when selecting which apps Fedora installs.